been suggested. But
let us, in our turn, be permitted to ask our opponents, have _they_
humbly and perseveringly applied for this divine strength? or
disclaiming that assistance, perhaps as tempting them to indolence,
have they been so much the more strenuous and unwearied in the use of
their own unaided endeavours? or rather have they not been equally
negligent of both? Renouncing the one, they have wholly omitted the
other. But this is far from being all. They even reverse all the methods
which we have recommended as being calculated to increase regard; and
exactly follow that course which would be pursued by any one who should
wish to reduce an excessive affection. Yet thus leaving untried all the
means, which, whether from Reason or Scripture, we maintain to be
necessary to the production of the end, nay using such as are of a
directly opposite nature, these men presume to talk to us of
impossibilities! We may rather contend that they furnish a fresh proof
of the soundness of our reasonings. We lay it down as a fundamental
position, that speculative knowledge alone, that mere superficial
cursory considerations, will be of no avail. Nothing is to be done
without the diligent continued use of the appointed method. They
themselves afford an instance of the truth of our assertions; and while
they supply no argument against the efficacy of the mode prescribed,
they acknowledge at least that they are wholly ignorant of any other.

BUT let us now turn our eyes to Christians of a higher order, to those
who have actually proved the truth of our reasonings; who have not only
assumed the name, but who have possessed the substance, and felt the
power of Christianity; who though often foiled by their remaining
corruptions, and shamed and cast down under a sense of their many
imperfections, have known in their better seasons, what it was to
experience its firm hope, its dignified joy, its unshaken trust, its
more than human consolations. In their hearts, love also towards their
Redeemer has glowed; a love not _superficial_ and unmeaning (think not
that this would be the subject of our praise) but constant and rational,
resulting from a strong impression of the worth of its object, and
heightened by an abiding sense of great, unmerited, and continually
accumulating obligations; ever manifesting itself in acts of diligent
obedience, or of patient suffering. Such was the religion of the holy
martyrs of the sixteenth century, the il